Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism (also national romanticism, organic nationalism,
identity nationalism) is the form of nationalism in which the state
derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the
unity of those it governs. This includes, depending on the particular
manner of practice, the language, race, culture, religion, and customs
of the nation in its primal sense of those who were born within its
culture. This form of nationalism arose in reaction to dynastic or
imperial hegemony, which assessed the legitimacy of the state from the
top down, emanating from a monarch or other authority, which justified
its existence. Such downward-radiating power might ultimately derive
from a god or gods (see the divine right of kings and the Mandate of
Heaven).
Among the key themes of Romanticism, and its most enduring legacy, the
cultural assertions of romantic nationalism have also been central in
post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. From its earliest
stirrings, with their focus on the development of national languages
and folklore, and the spiritual value of local customs and traditions,
to the movements that would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls
for self-determination of nationalities, nationalism was one of the
key issues in Romanticism, determining its roles, expressions and
meanings.
Historically in Europe, the watershed year for romantic nationalism
was 1848, when a revolutionary wave spread across the continent;
numerous nationalistic revolutions occurred in various fragmented
regions (such as Italy) or multinational states (such as the Austrian
Empire). While initially the revolutions fell to reactionary forces
and the old order was quickly re-established, the many revolutions
would mark the first step towards liberalization and the formation of
modern nation states across much of Europe.

Contents

1 Brief history

1.1
NationalismNationalism and revolution
1.2 Conservativism and revolution in the 19th century
1.3 Language
1.4 Folk culture
1.5 National epics

The ideas of Rousseau (1712–1778) and of Johann Gottfried von Herder
(1744–1803) inspired much early
Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism in Europe. In
1784 Herder argued that geography formed the natural economy of a
people, and that their customs and society would develop along the
lines that their basic environment favored.
From its beginnings in the late 18th century, romantic nationalism has
relied upon the existence of a historical ethnic culture which meets
the romantic ideal; folklore developed as a romantic nationalist
concept. The Brothers Grimm, inspired by Herder's writings, put
together an idealized collection of tales, which they labeled as
authentically German. The concept of an inherited cultural patrimony
from a common origin rapidly became central to a divisive question
within romantic nationalism: specifically, is a nation unified because
it comes from the same genetic source, that is because of race, or is
the participation in the organic nature of the "folk" culture
self-fulfilling?
Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism formed a key strand in the philosophy of Hegel
(1770–1831), who argued that there was a "spirit of the age" or
zeitgeist that inhabited a particular people at a particular time, and
that, when that people became the active determiner of history, it was
simply because their cultural and political moment had come. Because
of the Germans' role in the Protestant Reformation, Hegel (a Lutheran)
argued that his historical moment had seen the
Zeitgeist settle on the
German-speaking peoples.
In continental Europe, Romantics had embraced the
French RevolutionFrench Revolution in
its beginnings, then found themselves fighting the counter-Revolution
in the trans-national Imperial system of Napoleon. The sense of
self-determination and national consciousness that had enabled
revolutionary forces to defeat aristocratic regimes in battle became
rallying points for resistance against the French Empire (1804–14).
In Prussia, the development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage
in the struggle against
NapoleonNapoleon was argued by, among others, Johann
Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), a disciple of Kant. The word Volkstum,
or "folkhood", was coined in Germany as part of this resistance to
French hegemony.
Fichte expressed the unity of language and nation in his thirteenth
address "To the German Nation" in 1806:

The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond
doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are
joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature
herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other
and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more
and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an
inseparable whole. (Kelly, 1968, pp. 190-91)

Only when each people, left to itself, develops and forms itself in
accordance with its own peculiar quality, and only when in every
people each individual develops himself in accordance with that common
quality, as well as in accordance with his own peculiar quality-then,
and then only, does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true
mirror as it ought to be; and only a man who either entirely lacks the
notion of the rule of law and divine order, or else is an obdurate
enemy thereto, could take upon himself to want to interfere with that
law, which is the highest law in the spiritual world! (Kelly, 1968,
pp. 197-98)

NationalismNationalism and revolution[edit]
In the Balkans, Romantic views of a connection with classical Greece,
which inspired
PhilhellenismPhilhellenism infused the Greek War of Independence
(1821–32), in which the Romantic poet
Lord ByronLord Byron died of high fever.
Rossini's opera William Tell (1829) marked the onset of the Romantic
Opera, using the central national myth unifying Switzerland; and in
Brussels, a riot (August 1830) after an opera that set a doomed
romance against a background of foreign oppression (Auber's La Muette
de Portici) sparked the
Belgian RevolutionBelgian Revolution of 1830–31, the first
successful revolution in the model of Romantic nationalism. Verdi's
opera choruses of an oppressed people inspired two generations of
patriots in Italy, especially with "Va pensiero" (Nabucco, 1842).
Under the influence of romantic nationalism, among economic and
political forces, both Germany and Italy found political unity, and
movements to create nations similarly based upon ethnic groups. It
would flower in the Balkans (see for example, the Carinthian
Plebiscite, 1920), along the Baltic Sea, and in the interior of
Central Europe, where in the eventual outcome, the Habsburgs succumbed
to the surge of Romantic nationalism.[1] In Norway, romanticism was
embodied, not in literature, but in the movement toward a national
style, both in architecture and in ethos.[2] Earlier, there was a
strong romantic nationalist element mixed with Enlightenment
rationalism in the rhetoric used in British North America, in the
colonists' Declaration of Independence and the United States
Constitution of 1787, as well as the rhetoric in the wave of revolts,
inspired by new senses of localized identities, which swept the
American colonies of Spain, one after the other, from the May
Revolution of
ArgentinaArgentina in 1810.
Conservativism and revolution in the 19th century[edit]
See also:
Concert of Nations and Revolutions of 1848
Following the ultimate collapse of the
First French EmpireFirst French Empire with the
fall of Napoleon, conservative elements took control in Europe, led by
the Austrian noble Klemens von Metternich, ideals of the balance of
power between the great powers of Europe dominated continental
politics of the first half of the 19th century. Following the Congress
of Vienna, and subsequent
Concert of EuropeConcert of Europe system, several major
empires took control of European politics. Among these were the
Russian Empire, the restored French monarchy, the German
Confederation, under the dominance of Prussia, the Austrian Empire,
and the Ottoman Empire.
The conservative forces held sway until the
Revolutions of 1848Revolutions of 1848 swept
across Europe and threatened the old order. Numerous movements
developed around various cultural groups, who began to develop a sense
of national identity. While initially, all of these revolutions
failed, and reactionary forces would re-establish political control,
the revolutions marked the start of the steady progress towards the
end of the
Concert of EuropeConcert of Europe under the dominance of a few
multi-national empires and led to the establishment of the modern
nation state in Europe; a process that would not be complete for over
a century and a half. Central and Eastern Europe's political situation
was partly shaped by the two World Wars, while many national
identities in these two regions formed modern nation states when the
collapse of the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union and the multinational states Yugoslavia
and
CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia led to numerous new states forming during the last
two decades of the 20th century.
Language[edit]

John Gast, American Progress, (circa 1872) celebrates U.S. romantic
nationalism in the form of westward expansion – an idea known
as "Manifest Destiny".

Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism inspired the processes whereby folk epics, retold
legends and even fairy tales, published in existing dialects, were
combined with a modern syntax to create a "revived" version of a
language. Romantic nationalists expected patriots to then learn that
language and raise their children speaking that language – as
part of a general program to establish a unique identity. "Landsmål",
which is the foundation of a form of Norwegian used by 10% of the
population, mostly in western Norway, was, along with modern Czech,
the first language to follow this program, and it was joined by modern
Slovak, Finnish and later by Hebrew as nationalizing languages.
Katharevousa Greek was constructed as a form of Modern Greek drawing
on classical Greek morphology and vocabulary in an attempt to purify
the existing demotic Greek.
The linguistic processes of romantic nationalism demanded linguistic
culture models. Romantic historiography was centered on biographies
and produced culture heroes. The modern Italian of Risorgimento
patriots like
Alessandro ManzoniAlessandro Manzoni was based on the Tuscan dialects
sanctified by Dante and Petrarch. In English, Shakespeare became an
iconic figure (though not a modern linguistic model).
Folk culture[edit]

"'Good evening, uncle!' said the boy". A drawing by John Bauer on
Swedish folklore

Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism inspired the collection of folklore by such
people as the Brothers Grimm. The view that fairy tales, unless
contaminated from outside literary sources, were preserved in the same
form over thousands of years, was not exclusive to Romantic
Nationalists, but it fit in well with their views that such tales
expressed the primordial nature of a people.
The
Brothers GrimmBrothers Grimm were criticized because their first edition was
insufficiently German, and they followed the advice. They rejected
many tales they collected because of their similarity to tales by
Charles Perrault, which they thought proved they were not truly German
tales;
Sleeping BeautySleeping Beauty survived in their collection because the tale
of
BrynhildrBrynhildr convinced them that the figure of the sleeping princess
was authentically German. They also altered the language used,
changing each "Fee" (fairy) to an enchantress or wise woman, every
"prince" to a "king's son", every "princess" to a "king's
daughter".[3] Discussing these views in their third editions, they
particularly singled out Giambattista Basile's
PentameronePentamerone as the
first national collection of fairy tales, and as capturing Neapolitan
voice.[4]
The work of the
Brothers GrimmBrothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both
inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe
that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of
it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced
were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen
Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and the Australian Joseph Jacobs.[5]
Many artists and writers also drew on their native countries folklore
and folktunes for their own work to express their nationalism.
National epics[edit]

"The Bard" by John Martin: a romantic vision of a single Welsh bard
escaping a massacre ordered by Edward I of England, intended to
destroy Welsh culture

Main article: National epic
The concept of a "national epic", an extensively mythologized
legendary work of poetry of defining importance to a certain nation,
is another product of Romantic nationalism. The "discovery" of Beowulf
in a single manuscript, first transcribed in 1818, came under the
impetus of Romantic nationalism, after the manuscript had lain as an
ignored curiosity in scholars' collections for two centuries. Beowulf
was felt to provide people self-identified as "Anglo-Saxon" with their
missing "national epic",[6] just when the need for it was first being
felt: the fact that
BeowulfBeowulf himself was a
GeatGeat was easily overlooked.
The pseudo-Gaelic literary forgeries of "Ossian" had failed, finally,
to fill the need for the first Romantic generation.
The first publication of
The Tale of Igor's CampaignThe Tale of Igor's Campaign coincided with
the rise in Russian national spirit in the wake of the Napoleonic wars
and Suvorov's campaigns in Central Europe. The unseen and unheard Song
of Roland had become a dim memory, until the antiquary Francisque
Michel transcribed a worn copy in the
Bodleian LibraryBodleian Library and put it into
print in 1837; it was timely: French interest in the national epic
revived among the Romantic generation. In Greece, the
IliadIliad and
OdysseyOdyssey took on new urgency during the Greek War of Independence.
Amongst the world's Jewish community, the early Zionists considered
the
BibleBible a more suitable national epic than the Talmud.[7]
Many other "national epics," epic poetry considered to reflect the
national spirit, were produced or revived under the influence of
Romantic nationalism: particularly in the Russian Empire, national
minorities seeking to assert their own identities in the face of
RussificationRussification produced new national poetry – either out of
whole cloth, or from cobbling together folk poetry, or by resurrecting
older narrative poetry. Examples include the Estonian Kalevipoeg,
Finnish Kalevala, Polish Pan Tadeusz, Latvian Lāčplēsis, Armenian
Sasuntzi Davit by Hovhannes Tumanyan, Georgian The Knight in the
Panther's Skin and
Greater IranGreater Iran , Shahnameh.
Claims of primacy or superiority[edit]
At the same time, linguistic and cultural nationality, colored with
pre-genetic concepts of race, bolstered two rhetorical claims
consistently associated with romantic nationalism to this day: claims
of primacy and claims of superiority. Primacy is the claimed
inalienable right of a culturally and racially defined people to a
geographical terrain, a "heartland" (a vivid expression) or homeland.
The polemics of racial superiority became inexorably intertwined with
romantic nationalism.
Richard WagnerRichard Wagner notoriously argued that those who
were ethnically different could not comprehend the artistic and
cultural meaning inherent in national culture. Identifying
"Jewishness" even in musical style,[8] he specifically attacked the
Jews as being unwilling to assimilate into German culture, and thus
unable to truly comprehend the mysteries of its music and language.
Sometimes "national epics" such as the
NibelungliedNibelunglied have had a
galvanizing effect on social politics.
Arts[edit]

After the 1870s "national romanticism", as it is more usually called,
became a familiar movement in the arts. Romantic musical nationalism
is exemplified by the work of Bedřich Smetana, especially the
symphonic poem "Vltava". In Scandinavia and the Slavic parts of Europe
especially, "national romanticism" provided a series of answers to the
19th-century search for styles that would be culturally meaningful and
evocative, yet not merely historicist. When a church was built over
the spot in
St PetersburgSt Petersburg where Tsar
Alexander II of RussiaAlexander II of Russia had been
assassinated, the "Church of the Savior on Blood", the natural style
to use was one that best evoked traditional Russian features
(illustration, left). In Finland, the reassembly of the national epic,
the Kalevala, inspired paintings and murals in the National Romantic
style that substituted there for the international
Art NouveauArt Nouveau styles.
The foremost proponent in
FinlandFinland was Akseli Gallen-Kallela
(illustration, below right).

The Defense of the Sampo, Akseli Gallen-Kallela

By the turn of the century, ethnic self-determination had become an
assumption held as being progressive and liberal. There were romantic
nationalist movements for separation in Finland, Estonia,
LatviaLatvia and
Lithuania, the
Kingdom of BavariaKingdom of Bavaria held apart from a united Germany,
and Czech and Serb nationalism continued to trouble Imperial politics.
The flowering of arts which drew inspiration from national epics and
song continued unabated. The
Zionist movementZionist movement revived Hebrew, and
began immigration to Eretz Yisrael, and Welsh and Irish tongues also
experienced a poetic revival.
Twentieth-century political developments[edit]

Frog Tsarevna, by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1918.

In the first two decades of the 20th century, Romantic
NationalismNationalism as
an idea was to have crucial influence on political events. Following
the
Panic of 1873Panic of 1873 that gave rise to a new wave of anti-Semitism and
racism in the
German EmpireGerman Empire politically ruled by an authoritarian,
militaristic conservatism under
Otto von BismarckOtto von Bismarck and in parallel with
a wide revival of irrational emotionalism known as Fin de siècle
(also reflected to a degree in the contemporary art movements of
symbolism, the Decadent movement, and Art Nouveau), the racist,
so-called völkisch movement grew out of
Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism during
the last third of the 19th century, to some extent modelling itself on
British Imperialism and "the White Man's Burden". The idea was that
Germans should "naturally" rule over lesser peoples. Romantic
nationalism, which had begun as a revolt against "foreign" kings and
overlords, had come full circle, and was being used to make the case
for a "Greater Germanic Empire" which would rule over Europe.
The nationalistic and imperialistic tensions rising high between the
European nations throughout the irrational, neo-Romantic Fin de
siècle period eventually erupted in the First World War. After
Germany had lost the war and undergone the tumultuous German
Revolution, the völkisch movement drastically radicalized itself in
Weimar Germany under the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler would go on to say that "the basic ideas of
National-Socialism are völkisch, just as the völkisch ideas are
National-Socialist".
Outside of Germany, the belief among European powers was that
nation-states forming around unities of language, culture and
ethnicity were "natural" in some sense. For this reason President
Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson would argue for the creation of self-determining states
in the wake of the Great War. However, the belief in romantic
nationalism would be honored in the breach. In redrawing the map of
Europe,
YugoslaviaYugoslavia was created as an intentional coalition state among
competing, and often mutually hostile, southern Slavic peoples, and
the League of Nations' mandates were often drawn, not to unify ethnic
groups, but to divide them. To take one example, the nation now known
as
IraqIraq intentionally joined together three Ottoman vilayets, uniting
KurdsKurds in the north,
SunniSunni Arabs in the center, and
ShiaShia Arabs in the
south, in an effort to present a strong national buffer state between
TurkeyTurkey and Persia: over these was placed a foreign king from the
HashemiteHashemite dynasty native to the Hijaz.
Because of the broad range of expressions of romantic nationalism, it
is listed as a contributing factor from everything from the creation
of independent states in Europe, to the rise of
NaziNazi Germany. As an
idea, if not a specific movement, it is present as an assumption in
debates over nationality and nationhood even today, and many of the
world's nations were created from principles drawn from romantic
nationalism as their source of legitimacy.
See also[edit]

^ Miroslav Hroch, "Introduction: National romanticism", in Balázs
Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček, eds. Discourses of collective
identity in Central and Southeast Europe, vol. II National
Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements, 2007:4ff.
^ Oscar Julius Falnes, National romanticism in Norway, 1968.
^ Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, p31,
ISBN 0-691-06722-8
^ Benedetto Croce, "The Fantastic Accomplishment of Giambattista
Basile and His Tale of Tales", Jack Zipes, ed., The Great Fairy Tale
Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p 888-9,
ISBN 0-393-97636-X
^ Jack Zipes, The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and
Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p 846, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
^ The section "III.Early National Poetry" of The Cambridge History of
English and American Literature (1907–21) begins "By far the most
important product of the national epos is Beowulf...
^
Moshe HalbertalMoshe Halbertal (1997), People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and
Authority, p.132: "With the rise of Jewish nationalism, the relation
of many Jews to the
BibleBible and the
TalmudTalmud took another turn. The
Zionists preferred the
BibleBible to the
TalmudTalmud as the national literature,
for the
BibleBible tells a heroic story of the national drama whose focus
is the Land of Israel. While they objected to the Haskalah politics of
emancipation, Zionist thinkers also stressed the role of the Bible,
but they thought of it as an element in building a particular national
consciousness rather than as the basis of a shared Judeo-Christian
heritage enabling the integration of Jews in Europe. Unlike the
Talmud, they held, the
BibleBible had the potential to become a national
epic. Its drama unfolded in the hills of Judea, and it connected the
national claim to the land with a historical past. Nothing in the
Talmud, in contrast, appealed to the romanticism vital to national
movements. It does not tell the glorious story of a nation, it has no
warriors and heroes, no geography which arouses longing in the reader
or a sense of connection to an ancient home."
^ Wagner,
Das Judenthum in der MusikDas Judenthum in der Musik 1850.